Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.

A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U.

Titled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” the draft policy paper—penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios—the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King”…

Invoking the politically sacred name of Martin Luther King can provide cover for even the most outrageous attacks on liberty. You don’t like censorship, huh? Why do you hate Martin Luther King, you racist?

Government coercion is not the answer to the Silicon Valley thought police. Like the militant kooks on the Left Coast, federal bureaucrats will eventually use “fake news,” the Russians, and “hate speech” as pretexts to East Germanize the Internet if we let them.

The free market will provide alternatives to Google/Facebook/Twitter if it is allowed to — although they won’t survive if we don’t support them. Try Gab as an alternative to Twitter.